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INTO FREE POLAND 
VIA GERMANY 



By 

MARTHA CHICKERING 




OVERSEAS DEPARTMENT 

NATIONAL BOARD OF THE 
YOUNG WOMEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS 

- 600 LEXINGTON AVENUE 

NEW YORK CITY 
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Foreword 



Miss Martha Chickering was leader of the first unit 
of Polish Grey Samaritans to be sent into Poland. Miss 
Chickering returned to the United States in November, 
iqiq, after establishing the unit in Warsaw. 

The Polish Grey Samaritans are the outcome of an 
idea suggested by Madame Laura G. de Turczynowicz 
when she came to the Y. W. C. A. in 1Q17. Madame 
Turczynowicz urged that Polish girls in America should 
be given training which would fit them for reconstruction 
service in Poland. Her suggestion was adopted, and 
recruits were sought throughout the country. 

Polish probation courses were given in Cleveland, 
Trenton, Rochester, Milwaukee, Detroit, St. Louis, and 
Pittsburgh. Out of three hundred girls who took the 
probation courses, ninety qualified for the intensive 
course in the Polish Grey Samaritan School, equipped and 
opened on 53rd Street, New York City, October, iqi8. 

Two separate courses of study were planned: 

Course I included health education and physiology, 
industrial history, social problems, institutional visit- 
ing, systematized housekeeping, bookkeeping, cooking, 
arts and crafts, English, Polish, gymnasium. 

Course II included lecture work under the auspices 
of the School of Philanthropy, field work with the 
Charity Organization Society, child training with the 
Froebel League, health education, Polish, English, sys- 

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tematized housekeeping, bookkeeping, cooking, gym- 
nasium. 

The School closed its term of study on the seventh 
of June, iqiq, with the graduation of seventy-five 
students. 

Miss Lois Downs, of the Y. W. C. A. International 
Institute of Pittsburgh, Mrs. Thyrza Barton Dean and 
Mrs. Josefa Kudlicka, a Polish American, had been sent 
previously to Poland to arrange for establishing a unit 
of Grey Samaritans in Warsaw. 

This unit, of twenty girls, sailed July 31, iqiq, in 
charge of Y. W. C. A. Secretaries, Miss Chickering, Miss 
Frances West, Miss Emily Graves, and Miss Stephanie 
Kozlowska. The last three secretaries remained in War- 
saw; Miss West as Recreation Director, Miss Graves as 
House Director, and Miss Kozlowska, who is a registered 
nurse, as Medical Director. 

A second unit of ten girls will sail on December 1 1 , 
igiq, in charge of Miss Amy Tapping and Miss Augusta 
Mettel, a registered nurse. 

The Y. W. C. A., with the help of a $10,000 donation 
from the Polish Reconstruction Fund, pays for the train- 
ing, the transportation, the equipment and the main- 
tenance (for four and one-half months) of these girls. 
At the end of the four and a half months' period the 
Polish Government, through the Central Children's 
Committee, will assume responsibility for them. This 
Committee was first called into being by the American 
Relief Administration, but was later taken over by the 
Ministry of Public Health, a department of the Polish 
Government. 




CO 

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INTO FREE POLAND 
VIA GERMANY 

By MARTHA CHICKERING 

pN JULY of this year, after months of intensive 
training and impatient waiting, twenty Polish 
Grey Samaritans (accompanied by three Y. W. 
C. A. counsellors and myself) at last turned 
their faces toward the land of their ancestors. Tales of the 
sufferings of Poland, especially among the children, had 
poured into America and tugged at the heart strings of 
these Polish-American girls. 

After the armistice was signed Mr. Herbert Hoover 
had cabled his workers in America that he could not go 
away and leave the children of Europe as they were. 
The Children's Relief Committee was formed and Poland 
was named as the place of greatest need for children's 
work. Here was the opportunity for which the Polish 
Grey Samaritans had eagerly waited — the opportunity to 
give of themselves and of all they had learned in the 
service of their parent land. Mr. Hoover warmly en- 
dorsed the plan to bring a unit of Grey Samaritans to 
Warsaw, and we set sail on July 3 ist on the French liner, 
Rochambeau. 

As we passed the Statue of Liberty, the girls sang 
a Polish song and the Star Spangled Banner. How many 
times in the eventful weeks ahead we turned back in 
memory to the Statue — and there were days when she 

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Into Free Poland Via Germany 

seemed a long way off. Days in which we struggled with 
the beginning of Polish while the girls did the same with 
French, passed quickly, and we reached Paris expecting 
to proceed immediately to Warsaw. 
But — c'est Tarmistice! 

DIFFICULTIES OF JOURNEY 

Travelling to Poland just wasn't done in such large 
groups apparently. We heard of many ways to get to 
Poland — we might go to England and work up to Copen- 
hagen and thence in time find something going to Danzig. 
Or, we might go around by Trieste and perhaps get a 
train to Vienna and in time get to Warsaw. Or, if we 
would break up in small groups, we might, in the course 
of several weeks get ourselves to Warsaw on the very 
overworked Orient Express — the so-called "diplomatic 
train." But as a unit — twenty- four at a time — never! 

While we were waiting a weary month in Paris, I 
divided the girls into groups of four and sent them to 
visit some of the battlefields of France — Rheims, Chateau 
Thierry and Belleau Wood — that they might become 
somewhat accustomed to the tragedy there before seeing 
the suffering and devastation in their own country. Many 
of the girls had had brothers at Belleau Wood, and after 
they returned from these trips they would come to me in 
my room and pour out the stories of the day, and through 
all their talk ran their idealism for America. 

At last, through the courtesy of the Polish Typhus 
Mission, we were started from Coblenz straight across 
Germany in a German freight train. The Continental 
Y. M. C. A. had been good enough to detail Mr. Wag- 

Page Seven 



Into Free Poland Via Germany 

goner, an American Y. M. C. A. man on his way to 
Poland, to go with us as escort. It would be hard to 
pay enough tribute to his tireless interest and care. 
Fifty-four cars we were — first, box cars, then flat cars, 
carrying debusing machines, traction engines and Fords, 
and there, at the end, the Polish Grey Samaritans tucked 
into two compartment cars with their trunks in a tired 
box car! 

It was not exactly travelling de luxe, and food and 
water had to be snatched and passed at stops. But it 
was certainly novel, particularly as the girls decided that 
sitting on the Fords was the real way to travel, and the 
peasants in southern Germany will not soon forget the 
freight train that carried automobiles on flat cars, with 
girls in grey uniforms on the drivers' seats. 

Then came the Polish border! Here was Poland — 
free Poland — after a year and a half of work and waiting, 
and weeks of travel — ^just over the line! 

GERMANY 

But the German Empire — or rather Republic — had 
its own ideas on the subject. Incidentally, it isn't always 
easy to remember that Germany is a republic when she 
has never taken the trouble to change her postage stamps 
from the pre-war "Deutsches Reich," and when one has 
confronted a German officer wearing the Iron Cross of 
Emperor William and directing soldiers of the republic. 

But let that pass! The German Republic had its own 
ideas about letting us into Poland. Our freight was not 
paid any farther — the border had been moved eighteen 
kilometers east (by Germany) since we left Coblenz — 

Page Nine 



Into Free Poland Via Germany 

the German engine could not take us farther, because it 
could not be trusted across the Polish border, etc. There 
were many reasons given us but no engine; and we were 
helpless. 

So while the American captain in control of the train 
argued and expostulated, we lived in German freight 
yards, under guard, for five days and nights, cooking our 
food by the rails with the help of an American mess- 
sergeant who was one of the ten doughboys on the train. 
Much fun the girls made out of it, too — but not all fun. 
For behind the fun was concealed an anxiety which never 
left us, that the Germans might not be considerate of the 
girls, if they were known to be Polish, so we allowed no 
Polish spoken and no use of Polish names. On the track 
next us was an armored train, with machine guns and 
two big Austrian 75's — always with steam up, ready to 
go forth in pursuit of Poles if the constantly threatening 
border trouble should flare up. It was a highly sug- 
gestive neighbor. 

What did we see in Germany? Peaceful fields, houses 
with all the bricks in regular sequence forming walls and 
roofs instead of ruined heaps, as in parts of France and 
most of Poland, and some barefoot women and children. 
We were told there was hunger in the big cities, but that 
there was such hunger as we saw in Warsaw, I find it 
hard to believe. In one place, the officers of the soldiers 
who guarded us put on civilian clothes and went home 
at night. We were told that these men were not soldiers — 
only volunteers. Perhaps that is Germany's way of keep- 
ing one million men under arms! One cannot tell much 
of a country by crossing it in three days and then living 
five days in its freight yards; but one cannot come out 

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Into Free Poland Via Gennany 

of France, cross Germany and enter Poland without sad 
comparisons, and one cannot see the growing assurance 
of Germans as one goes east without asking, "What does 
this mean for Poland? Has Germany forgotten so soon 
that she was beaten last year?" 

POLAND 

Finally, an engine came and we crossed the border 
into Poland — free Poland! Polish soldiers in Polish uni- 
forms were at the first station, and the girls saw the 
dream of generations of Poles realized at last. Austrian 
soldiers, German soldiers, Russian soldiers had been 
common enough in Poland, but the girls had seen Polish 
soldiers only in secret drill — the secret drills through 
which they hoped some day to overthrow the oppressor. 

It was a day never-to-be-forgotten, and worth the 
long suspense — a triumphal ride across Posen, and finally 
into Warsaw. I think of Poland as a plain (there are 
very beautiful mountains in the south, but most of 
Poland is flat) with far horizons, woods that push straight 
up into the sky, roadside crosses that climb up and up 
like the woods — plain, austere, aspiring crosses, not 
ornate like most of Europe's shrines — and peasant folk 
with eyes that made more than one American say to 
me, "I have never seen so many kind eyes as in Poland." 
All of this, Poland, innately, is. Above all, Poland is a 
land of brave men and devoted women — eager patriots 
all — and the Polish Government is making wonderful 
strides in the face of terrific obstacles. ! 

There are a few facts Americans should know about 
the Poland of to-day. 

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Into Free Poland Via Germany 

OUTSTANDING PROBLEMS IN POLAND 
In the first place, Poland is at war, holding 1,500 
kilometers of front against a highly organized Bolshevist 
army. And that war is partly our war because, if Germany 
ever establishes direct connection with the Bolshevist 
Government, we have reason to believe it will not be for 
our good. A strong Poland is the last thing Germany 
wants to see. Military hospitals in Warsaw are full of 
wounded today. Just before I left in October, notices 
of a new conscription appeared on the streets, and many 
youths of fifteen and sixteen were entering the ranks. 
I saw a boy of fourteen who had been in the trenches 
two years. 

In the second place, whatever is true of post-bellum 
France is doubly true of war-ravaged Poland, but in the 
case of Poland there is no indemnity coming back. Like 
France, the country was stripped of its machinery and 
means of production. In one factory, which I visited, 
the Germans had carried away nine out of ten machines 
before they were interrupted. That factory is now 
running with the one machine. Poland has practically 
no raw materials with which to turn the wheels of those 
factories that can operate. Persons in Eastern Poland 
have lived on grass, and nothing but grass for weeks. At 
one of our stops a child eagerly seized a bit of meat which 
I had left on my plate, and hurried away to divide it 
with his companion. The bread for the army is driven 
through the streets under guard, that it may not be 
stolen. 

In the third place, for more than a hundred years, 
Poland has been divided among three masters — Austria, 

Page Fifteen 





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In their Sunday beat before the village church 



Into Free Poland Via Germany 

Prussia, and Russia. At a peasant fair in Galicia I collected 
coins of Hungary, Austria, Russia, Germany and Poland, 
all in circulation. Under Russia, and somewhat under 
Germany, no Pole could hold public office, even to being 
connected in the most minor capacity with public utilities. 
This means that the citizens of Free Poland must learn 
self-government from the ground up — not only how to 
be mayors and presidents, but how to be street-car con- 
ductors and post-office clerks. More than all, it means 
that a people educated to three kinds of government 
must mould and adapt themselves to one. 

In one village of Posen — formerly German Poland — 
the station master regretted that we were not to change 
engines in his district. "Here we would do it for you 
promptly, but further up the Russian Poles will promise 
you very politely, yes — but then they will not do it. 
Russian Poles are like that." 

A Grey Samaritan girl upbraided him quickly. "You 
are no longer a country of Russian or German or Austrian 
Poles; you are all one people now. You should learn the 
spirit of unity from America." 

To Poland, America is the saviour nation, represent- 
ing the essence of philanthropy and practical idealism. 
Pictures of Mr. Hoover can be found in nearly every 
shop window. President Wilson's illness was felt as a 
national calamity. Mr. Gibson, the American minister, 
is universally esteemed. No hospitality is too great to 
be extended to Americans. 

At one of our stopping places we were entertained at 
dinner by a family formerly well-to-do and prominent 
socially. The dinner of several courses was excellent. 

Page Seventeen 




The pig walks into the family portrait 



Into Free Poland Via Germany 

We mentioned casually that the coffee was particularly 
delicious. Our host then admitted that this coffee had 
been saved by his wife since before the war for some 
"special occasion." And this bit of coffee had been saved 
even though Austrian, Russian and German armies had 
been successively billeted on them, and then given to us 
as Americans! We later discovered that, after our 
departure, the family returned to its usual daily food 
of potatoes and sour milk. 

When it was learned that our Grey Samaritans had 
come to offer themselves and their training to the land 
of their ancestors, nearly every city in Poland which 
had medical work petitioned for them. 

The Mayor of Kalisz asked to have two of these girls 
come to his city simply to strengthen the morale of his 
discouraged workers. I chose the two girls I thought 
best fitted for the task, and learned only ten minutes 
before they were to start that one of them had arranged 
to meet her fianc6, a soldier in the Polish Army, that 
week end. She had not seen him since iqi/ when he 
enlisted in the Polish Army in America, and she might 
not be able to arrange another meeting for months. 
When I asked her why she had not told me of her plans, 
she answered, "Miss Chickering, I came over here to 
help Poland, not for my personal pleasure." 

WARSAW 

It was finally decided to keep all of the girls in War- 
saw, the capital. Warsaw is a beautiful city — not large, 
and, like many European cities to-day, seriously over- 
crowded. It has beautiful parks, buildings, monuments. 

Page Nineteen 




Home from the bread line on a winter's day 



Into Free Poland Via Germany 

As has been written again and again, it has some of the 
most charming and cultivated people in the world. The 
Poland which gave us Chopin and Paderewski, Coper- 
nicus, Sinkiewicz and Mickiewicz is not yet dead, any 
more than the Poland which gave us Kosciusko. Even 
in its suffering, Warsaw's windows are full of beautiful 
etchings and paintings, and shops of artists' materials 
are abundant. Opera in Warsaw — particularly the re- 
vived national Polish operas like "Halka" — is very 
beautiful. Moreover, Warsaw is forging up hill, not 
slipping down. When Miss Downs came into Warsaw 
in June, she said it was a rare thing to see the Polish 
working people in shoes; now, about half have shoes, if 
not stockings. Some food, clothing, soap, tobacco and 
raw materials have come in. 

Even so, when I close my eyes, certain pictures 
rise in my mind, not because they were rare and striking 
incidents, but because I saw them repeated again and 
again, until they were burned into my memory : a w oman 
barefoot, leaning against a wall, too weary to lift her eye- 
lids enough to let you see the despair in her eyes; a man 
(or a child, or a woman) hurrying down the streets hugging 
his loaf of bread for which he had waited hours in the 
bread-line; funerals, all too often with a baby's tiny 
casket on the bare frame of the dray which is a Polish 
hearse; children begging for bread; a child looking through 
the window to watch you eat; a city of people not perhaps 
starving to death (though we found such even in the 
three weeks I was there) but on the acute edge of want, 
and watching with gray apprehension the merciless draw- 
ing down of winter. 

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Into conditions such as this came our girls — eager, 
able, devoted and ready to face any hardships, any 
difficulties for Poland. 

FINIS 

Two of them were put in charge of a nursery in a 
refugee camp. Added to its other problems, Poland has 
fifteen camps of refugees from all Eastern Europe. The 
one I visited had two thousand people there at the time, 
and had had over one hundred thousand pass through 
its barracks during the war. 

Two other girls took another nursery. 

The other sixteen w^ere set to visiting in the homes of 
the families of Polish soldiers in order to report cases of 
acute want. 

It was like watching an army dig in, wait a bit to 
test the strength of its opponent, and then attack. 

The second day, a baby died in one nursery. Some 
were desperately sick from malnutrition in the other. 
Then the girls attacked. All they had learned, all their 
intelligence, all the love that poured through their eager 
Polish- American hearts into the saving of Polish babies 
were pitted against death. And in the short three weeks 
I was there, the death-rate of their nurseries had fallen 
fifty per cent. 

With the approach of winter, ten soup kitchens will 
be opened under The Central Children's Committee, of 
which Mme. Helena Paderew^ska is chairman. The girls will 
direct each kitchen Food and the minor medical care which 
can change conditions so radically will be given the children. 

There is an appalling amount of eye-infection and 
tuberculosis among the children. Out of two thousand 

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school children examined, practically all had tuberculosis 
in one form or another. In the case of these diseases, 
our girls will attempt to teach the victims the simpler 
rules of care and prevention. 

Of course, we cannot expect twenty girls to meet all 
of the vast needs of the war-bled city, but what we 
believe they can and will do, is (i) to set a standard for 
child welfare work for Poland, and (2) build up scientific 
social service based on the case work method. (Statistics 
were frowned upon under Russia, so a survey is difficult 
to make but, as nearly as we could find out, the death- 
rate of children in Warsaw seemed to be about twenty- 
five per cent). 

The Polish Grey Samaritans and their service are 
America's gift to Poland through the Y. W. C. A. We 
have taken of Poland's own youth, trained it, and now 
given it back to the mother land. These girls bring 
skill, a knowledge of the Polish language, an under- 
standing of Polish traditions and an unbreakable devo- 
tion to the land of their ancestors. 

But they bring still more. 

A woman who spoke English met one of the girls 
with me one day, a girl whose residence in America did 
not span a dozen years. "But she speaks Polish!" the 
woman said to me in surprise. "Yes, truly — she is 
Polish," I replied. The woman turned and looked at 
the girl again, wistfully. "Ah, yes," she said, to herself, 
not to me, "she is Polish, but yes, she has lived in America 
and freedom shines in her." 

The Polish Grey Samaritan brings to Poland, above all 
else, the spirit of democracy — America's ideal of liberty. 

Page Twenty- five 



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